Socially Conscious Consumerism: A Systematic Review of the Body of Knowledge

This systematic review synthesizes 30 years of research on whether consumers are willing to reward firms for their positive sustainability actions either by changing their behaviour or by paying a premium. The review was conducted from November 2008 to March 2009 at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, under a grant from the Network for Business Sustainability.

From a broad search of 1700 academic and practitioner articles, we selected 91 articles, based on a variety of quality and relevance criteria, to summarize the knowledge in this area.

• Will consumers pay a premium? If so, how much? How do they behave when faced with trade-offs?
• What social and environmental attributes are most considered in purchase decisions?
• Are there differences across geographies, industries, products and brands?
• How can managers close the attitude-intention- behaviour gap with consumers?
• What should future researchers of socially conscious consumerism know?